Surfacing follows and develops additional the feminist themes of The Edible Woman-the complaint against the female sex role and the predatory and aggressive attitude and behavior of men towards women-anti-capitalist; anti-American and ecological concerns continue to be part of the author's radical, perhaps revolutionary message of these early novels. The theme of the heroine's impasse as an artist writer is also ever-present. In Surfacing she involves herself in a search for, among other things, the roots of her creativity, buried within her and relating to her past and childhood. In this novel, the enemy is even more clearly outlined, the male, economic technological power structure that dominates and exploits everyone and everything, women, people in general, nature and its resources.